


Mother

by Keyboardwielding_Squid, ThanaisTheRiver



Category: Enderal (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Pre-Canon, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 01:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19162588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keyboardwielding_Squid/pseuds/Keyboardwielding_Squid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThanaisTheRiver/pseuds/ThanaisTheRiver
Summary: He has only one true mother.





	Mother

**Author's Note:**

> That is an exceptionally poetic and delightful traslation by Keyboardwielding_Squid. And yes, again and again, thank you so much!

Blood carried the taste of iron. Iron was forged into weapons. Weapons that were forged to spill blood.   
  
It was so elegantly simple.  
  
Back in the orphanage, when Tharaêl still trailed his older brother with the curiosity of childhood, he had known other truths. That high above the highest caves laid a field of clouds in the sky, like seafoam taking to the air from atop the crest of the waves, dreaming it could turn into birds. That beyond it all shone the sun like the largest of lanterns, filled with the brightest yolk that anyone could imagine.   
  
They hadn’t quite managed, back then, to determine who it was that switched the sun on and off, or why there was a night at all.  
  
They never had the time.  
  
The birds tumbled from the heavens, catching fire under the lamps of Barnabas the Mechanic. The seafoam scattered and settled as mold and rot on slimy walls. The sky was made a prisoner far beyond the dome of the caves. And so his world had narrowed down to the dust of the Arena.   
  
Her truths were much simpler. Clearer. And above all, they were the truths of life itself.  
  
She throbbed with the howls of the crowd, pulse weakened by disappointment, strengthened by ecstasy, frenzied by the sight of blood. She breathed the deadly dance of swords, in and out, in and out. She devoured with the same greed living men and corpses alike, while the despair and depravity of her rotten womb warped the mind, giving birth to ever more monsters in their mother’s image.  
  
He’d had to become part of her, to follow that pulse and breathing. He’d had to learn to strike for the kill and to bury his pain when struck. And he’d succeeded. The result of a well-learned lesson soon came to squirm beneath his feet, and the pungent smell of the dying man’s excrement left him vomiting.  
  
On that day, he outgrew childhood like a babe did its diapers.  
  
She was his teacher. His tutor. His overseer, wetnurse, and mother.  
  
The Arena.  
  
She was an eye reflecting all things with Pyrean accuracy — a world built from blood and iron, from greed and from poverty. Eyes were the mirror of the soul, and the Arena was the mirror of the soul of the whole world.  
  
The warmth of Letho’s name, the warmth of family, sheltered him from the Undercity’s unending winter. It caressed and comforted him with a tenderness beyond words, always smiling, ever thoughtful, kind as no other things could be. It promised protection and safety, even when an inch of steel lodged itself between Tharaêl’s ribs, or when he was left to crawl in refuse like an overgrown rat. It lit his path like a lifeline through all the darkest, hardest days.  
  
It was a fire that cast no shadows. A flame that warmed without scorching. A candle that the mirror of the Arena could not reflect.  
  
Tharaêl feared that he would lose that candle. Down in the Dust Pit’s ring, at times, he saw not the eyes of his foes, but different ones, bright grey and strict — and in those moments shame came to encase Tharaêl’s soul in ice. How dare he kill? Letho would never. Never in his life.

But his life had ended, and that life was over.  
  
In this life, this new life, he was taught by the Arena. And slowly, softly, she pushed the back of her exhausted child ever on, even when he could barely make it out of the ring by himself.  
  
Until, one day, he was pulled out of his thoughts by a voice — a voice that should not have belonged to a living man.  
  
“You’re not afraid of taking blades and blows to your face.”  
  
Tharaêl raised his head in silence, and stared intently at the mark of the Rhalâs before nodding.  
  
“We need mercenaries like you.”  
  
Four years of constant effort, of taking a knife to his soul to shear off all the weight he could and reshape his very nature. Four years of betraying his brother with every breath, every step, every fight in the Dust Pit. To become a mercenary?  
  
No.   
  
“I don’t want to be a mercenary,” Tharaêl answered. “I want to join the Rhalâta.”  
  
The cold, dark eyes of a hardened murderer bore down on him and his words, in that same way a stern dog would push its puppies into the ground. As the silence slowly lengthened, Tharaêl thought himself over. To be killed for his insolence, to be made to die in pain with his guts splattered by his sides, to be—  
  
“You will say that to the First Seer,” came the Rhalâim’s answer.  
  
Mother Arena encouraged her offspring as she always did, whispering in his ear with her rotten, putrid breath, ever yearning to know how well she had taught her children.  
  
And somewhere, gray eyes watched, solemn and sorrowful. 


End file.
